Making informal religious representations visible in Japanese YouTube comments on Apple’s Crush advertisement

While formal religious representations have long been a central focus in psychology and cognitive science, informal religious representations remain understudied because their religious dimension is often embedded in everyday practices, values, and norms. This study examines how such representations may become visible in language on social media, focusing on Japan. We analyzed over 7,000 Japanese- and English-language YouTube comments on news coverage of Apple’s 2024 “Crush!” advertisement, which was criticized in Japan as conflicting with beliefs and values concerning respect for objects. Using a combination of dictionary-based and topic modeling approaches, we examined how emotion- and religion-related language appeared across linguistic contexts. The results showed that, in Japanese-language comments, terms related to respect for objects (e.g., mottainai ) appeared in topics linked to both religion-related and negative emotional language. A comparable pattern was not observed in the English-language corpus, although emotional expressions were prominent in these comments. Together, these findings suggest that informal religious representations can surface in everyday digital discourse through expressions concerning respect for objects that, in some contexts, carry religious resonance.